


Nos Morituri

by ClockworkRainbow



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: Character Undeath, Colosseum worldbuilding, Gen, Tiso lives and it surprises everyone; especially Godtamer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2020-08-18 20:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20197597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/pseuds/ClockworkRainbow
Summary: The life of a gladiator is one of continuous proximity to death. To that end, it is meaningless to forestall that conclusion. The queen of the Arena knows this more than anyone.Which is why she should really know better than to intercede on another's behalf, much less the latest glory-seeking fool to feed the Colosseum's hunger.And, yet.





	1. The Body

She finds the body for trivial reasons.

One of the fair-faced fools, the ones that do not don masks, clatters up to her, all pleasantries and iron chains, with the itinerary for the next several days. No challengers have emerged of particular promise; her presence won’t be required for the festivities. It is as close to a holiday as anyone receives in the colosseum- a luxury of her position- and she does the only sensible thing and spends the first hour of it as far from the sweltering pit of the respite and the sounds of the fools of the day meeting their ends.

The crowd roars in mirth as she steps into the coolness of the cave, the last sound she hears from them. She doesn’t need to listen for the drum beats; if these are inconsequential creatures, laughter only means injury, and injury only means death. The mercy of Lord Fool is extended only rarely, to those who are termed worth more alive.

Even she, blood-crowned queen of this barren little corner of the world, cannot count on it.

No one follows her when she passes. Orisio is in his pen, but she has long been trusted to see to that herself. They know her, at this point. Their working relationship has been long, nearly to a point that it eclipses her lived years.

They do not waste locks on her any more.

The cavern is an immediate cooling from the colosseum’s fever. It rests pleasant on the metal of her armor. She takes a meandering path, one away from the infestations of belflies that clog the entrance. The audience has their own ways into their temple of bones- so long as it does not inconvenience them, they let the beasts congregate, send the more expendable tamers out to pluck from their numbers as Lord Fool’s needs befit, creeping up on specimens with metal cage traps, and hoping that a latch does not fail, or that the fly doesn’t see them first.

The blinding light of Kingdom’s Edge is an aberration to a land of murky gloom and deep shadows. They say a god died here; they say a star fell here. They seem to have no end of the things they can waste their breath upon. But the ash captures light, throws it back with a gleam that seems to sharpen every image as it enters the eye.

She stops, as one must always, traveling from the dark into the chilling light, to behold it all, and to track the spots of orange that show lurking aspids.

When she sees him, he is painfully ordinary, uncommon only for the stroke of fortune that’s put him so close by. Most of the bodies thrown from the colosseum make their way all the way down the great wall, to the pool of acid at the city’s foot. But this one- his back has caught on a sturdy spur of rock, relatively near the top. It has not broken him any more than he already has been.

And broken, he _certainly_ is. She is not surgeon or medicine bug, but she has carved many bodies, and seen more torn asunder. The shield that yet dangles limp on his arm- an old friend, tended lovingly, for how the patterns of wear on its surface contrast the meticulous way it has been scrubbed of the residue and filth of use- appears to have betrayed him. With the point of one foot, she can turn his arm over, and see the cyan blood that stains his grip.

Faced with a crushing impact, he had thought to protect his stomach.

His companion had been driven through his armor. Handle-first, it had shattered the plates, and these layers of fortification had become the daggers that cut him through. He struggles to breathe around them; the air bubbles in his throat.

How remarkably stubborn of him to be alive at all in this state.

How meaningless a defiance it is. The hoppers may be timid, now, because she is here, and she is predator enough they fear her, but a feast such as him- the smell of his blood must tantalize them. They will come for him, probably faster than the creeping failure of his organs.

Picked over by scavengers while still alive. What a fate.

She looks over him, the brightness of his armor, of his shield- every mark and blemish on the repair and polish of either, things she can recognize- here a lucky obble’s shot, there a skid left where the trapdoor of the arena had caught him, jolted his body on the way down.

Vanity. A foreign thing, no matter how often she sees it. In her mind’s eye, she looks over a creature that still had a name, laboring over a scarlet helmet with a piece of cloth, worrying at a new dent in its surface by flickering torchlight.

She cannot find herself in that young idiot, even as she knows that it can’t have been that long ago. But looking down at the aspirant wheezing here, something about the sight exhausts her, and she had been perhaps foolishly hoping this little walk would amount to some kind of _reprieve_.

Kindness, of course, would be to snap his neck now. She could sit by him and wait for him to die, of course, keep the beasts at bay, but what value in idling the time he has left? He has wasted his life on this, a polished shield, meticulous armor. She settles onto her knees; her fingers touch the fabric of a simple tied scarf, the only humble accoutrement he seems to possess, as she settles them under the back of his head.

He stirs, faintly.

“_…Why_?”

The sound gives her pause. As parting words, it is not original. He rasps it, faintly, from only the smallest mouthful of air he can muster with less pain, and yet it seems torn from somewhere far deeper in his stomach.

She finds herself peeved.

“What could you possibly have expected?”

But he has no answer. He is, as he was a moment before, limp, empty, a thing to be acted on, a small mercy to be given or rescinded by whim, but not a person to choose, to speak, to hear or reply; he is nothing left.

What is _she_ expecting? In the single time she has been out here, five more bodies have left the arena, no doubt a few of them still alive. She can watch one of them try to grasp a ledge, fail. Fall.

Snapping his neck?

The sensible thing is leaving him, and getting on with things. She’s wasting time. Orisio deserves a walk, a proper one rather than prowling the confines of his enclosure. Or fresh meat, she could get him that, while she’s out.

She sets his head down, and stands. He does not muster energy again, does not speak, or stir, call out or grasp her leg. He simply lies there, living among the dead, soon to join them.

She could sharpen her weapon. There are plenty of things she could be doing.

She tells herself this, as she wedges her hands under his shoulders, already thinking of how much of a hassle this is going to be.


	2. The Cleanup

Those pronounced champions of the arena are offered exclusive quarters within its surrounding structures.

It is not a kindness. Like anything within the colosseum, it is both practicality and snide joke. The rabble squabble far beneath her, and dream of these vaulted chambers; the lower champions dwelling closer imagine her here, in privacy and comfort, yearn to achieve that status. Every lump in a cot or pest seeking their meals just drives them to hunt their betters, who chase after her in turn.

It is bribery, and once taken, it proves hollow, like everything else the arena promises. But until taken, it stirs the gladiators into ravening beasts.

It is also protection from the very same ferocity it inspires. The desperation to become champion does not know honor or restraint. Many champions ascend the ranks by slitting their predecessors’ throat. The colosseum does not mind that, so long as it happens in the arena. Away from the audience’s eyes, it becomes a problem.

She has not cared for either of these reasons. She has never found her ownership of these quarters a happy occasion, even if she was fortunate enough, she supposes, in its acquisition. But, at present, as they have been often enough in the past that her palms are tainted by the bribe regardless- it is _useful_. No one’s eyes are here to see her.

Orisio paces his enclosure at the sight of her, huffing hopefully. She’d have liked to greet him properly, but her hands are full, so she simply makes an effort to complete her work more quickly, heading to the bath at the rear of the structure.

Springwater will only do so much for this one, but it’s a start. She removes the parts of his armor that can be easily, as if she’s shelling a fresh kill. Surprisingly, he fights her momentarily on the shield- tightens his fingers with what frail, shaking strength he has left.

It is a battle that he obviously loses, but she takes note of it all the same.

The armor shards in his stomach, she waits on. Pulling them out will end poorly unless she has something ready to staunch the bleeding. It takes time to prop him in a way that doesn’t put pressure on them, but so he won’t choke if he vomits.

She finds poultices, suture thread, and a bone needle, pauses to consider if there is more she needs, when she feels that she is being watched.

His eyes are open.

“You _are_ a stubborn fool,” she tells him, half impressed. “Don’t move around. You’ll gore yourself worse.”

He blinks, seems to cast around for the sound with small movements of his head. That, it seems, is the most he’s capable of, and, after a moment, he settles again.

It had not been a particularly alert gaze. She has not yet ruled out that this may be entirely pointless, that he may have dashed his head in the descent or before it, that even at best, he is someone who came _here_ of all places, and probably wanted to, and lost.

Those who fail and survive are especially dangerous. It is then, they become desperate, violent things.

She is making a mistake, she thinks, as she eases his body out of the water to see to his stomach.

As soon as the shards move, all of that which they held back bursts like water at a dam. She has to work quickly, and close the wounds opened- stitches, salve, bandages. This, at least, is peaceful. It is easier than working on herself, or Orisio; his state of weakness leaves him as compliant as if she were stitching up a training dummy.

There is no room for her mind to wander. As always, industriousness is her salvation. Perhaps, she thinks, that’s her angle to all this- bereft of combat, some part of her had wanted a project.

Ha.

She could have chosen better.

A bell jangles at her outer door by the time she finishes. She props him by the pool’s side, and rises to see to it.

Fair-faced, a servant of the Colosseum. A skittish one- they jolt and murmur obsequiousness, training eyes on her feet with occasional, nervous flits of gaze traveling up her arms.

Following their gaze, she notices the black chitin has been soaked blue in the course of her work. In fact, she’s nearly covered with blood. One could mistake her for a blue beetle in matching armor, if not for the unevenness of the color.

This _must_ be a new servant, if that sight alone shocks them. “I am busy,” she says, in a tone that carries a clear air of command, expectation. It echoes tinny through her helmet.

This jolts them to attention, surely as if they’d wandered too close to one of the volt twisters. “M-Madam, the cooks would like to- ah, that is- if she is excusing a humble fool’s intrusion-”

Oh.

“I will take lunch in my room. The usual. And meat for Orisio.” She eyes the nervous creature over- they wear a thicker than usual chain, a heavy one around the arms, which digs into the softness of their joints. New indeed- the apprentices of the fair-faced tend to be punished more harshly, to accustom them to such treatment. Not all of the way this one shakes is because of her. “Have someone _else_ bring it.” She threads a note of disdain with the latter. On matters of discipline, the older servants accept no criticism. But when it comes to a veteran gladiator’s arrogance, lavish accommodations are made to flatter it. If she despises this one, it will ensure that they’ll be kept from her eyesight.

(They could also be punished further, for her word, but she cannot protect them, if they are already here. Small mercy always has prices to pay. Sometimes it is better not to at all.)

“Of course- of course!” They bow. The bindings squeeze, but they hold the pose, trembling, until she makes her noise of dismissal.

As an afterthought, she catches their forearm. She can feel the way their body shudders. “Honey soup, as well.”

She lets them go, a patina of blue smeared on their arm visible until they disappear. Part of her wonders if, in that state, they’ll remember that addition. On the other hand, her current state has ensured the interaction will be, if nothing else, exceptionally memorable.

If nothing else, she thinks, with another look at the blood, her fool’s no plague-crazed berserker. It’s astonishingly clean, in fact- there isn’t even the faintest murky brown. Perhaps he only came to the kingdom recently. She’s heard rumors, at least, that the blight does not escape these lands.

Orisio’s snout is pressed against the door flap that his meals come through, huffing and clicking softly in the way that tends to come when he is begging. With a sigh that is just slightly resigned, she goes to see to him, scratching the rough bridge of his muzzle. When he lifts his head, she lets it, allows him to spread his feelers over her fingertips. The feelers curl, tug her hand closer, and short raspy tongues lick up the blood until he is mouthing her entire hand, and contemplating her forearm.

She clicks sharply, touches the side of his jaw. Obediently, he disengages, leaving her hand slobbered clean. There is a faint prickle of his acidic saliva- she should probably wash that off.

She should probably wash, _all_ of her off.

“Soon,” she tells Orisio when he starts begging again, and heads to the bath, this time for her own.

Most of the fonts in the Colosseum are artificial. A natural spring lurks somewhere above, hidden and guarded jealousy by the bath attendants. From that source, brass pipes had been laid within the stone, leading to different pools carved in the structure. Hers has the shortest route- the water is pure, and steaming.

She sheds tasset and helmet first. The cuirass and pauldrons are of a piece, and removed together. The steam begins the work of lifting the blood from her chitin; the rest is achieved simply scrubbing with her hands. Her body is clean, quickly, and she sets upon her armor with indifference before the shield catches her eye.

Odd thing. Not like the gladiators’ shells. He’d been stubborn in how he clung to it, and now, it makes her wonder. Hefting it, it’s surprisingly weighty, for someone close to her size. For its form, it seems to be the tool of someone who cares only so much for defense, but the center of it is surprisingly durable. There seems complex pieces to it- some sort of trigger in the grip she can’t immediately make sense of.

She thinks to prod it further, thinks to try it against her lance. The bell sounds again, this time a single, precise note. She leaves the shield, dons her helmet and answers.

An older servant, surly and wordless. She knows this one- a former warrior of the arena, spared after humiliation for his skill cutting bodies extended outside the arena. He wears no chains, but his old battered helmet, and comes pushing a cart that he surrenders with a nod.

They don’t need to waste time on explanations, especially when one of them is lacking a voice. They both know what is expected, what is needed.

She catalogues the cart’s contents. Her order is all there. For Orisio, who is less of a discerning palate, he usually receives a choice of arena leavings- the ones that aren’t flung from trapdoors to keep the floor clear. Today, evidently, has been of little event- a gladiator’s body, preemptively shelled of weapons and armor, and a few obbles, likewise stripped.

She puts the bodies into Orisio’s enclosure, waits until he settles into pleased crunching before carrying her own meal to the table. The honey soup, she sets aside for now, and removes her helmet again to eat after a brief glance to ensure the door is all the way closed.

Some of the younger or stranger members of the colosseum- those who are more dedicated to peculiar ideas than they are to survival- wonder after her face. It is not for their benefit or spite that she conceals it, but regardless, she has her reasons, and finds them irksome. Not that she would suspect that particular servant of attempting to spy on her, but, it is better to simply set parameters that are enforced against everyone than it is to weigh them on a case by case basis.

And there she goes, pretending to be cautious like she doesn’t have an unconscious stranger in her quarters. If he hasn’t woken by this evening, she’ll find something to restrain him with before she sleeps. Orisio would alert her of any intrusion, but, he might not think to complain about someone she brought in herself. He’s loyal; he isn’t infallible. And no matter the bond between rider and beast, one does not read the other’s mind. To presume otherwise is a folly that has eaten people alive.

She’s watched it happen enough.

She lets the spoon rest beside her meal.

She wonders which of her mistakes will kill her.

Maybe, she thinks, it’ll be this one, the fool with the shield. Not now, perhaps, but if he recovers. Gets strong enough to hunt her, after long enough that she lets her guard down.

She supposes there are worse ways to die, and keeps eating.


	3. Tiso

_Son of a blighted worm his stomach is killing him_.

It’s a half-formed thought that throws him awake almost hard enough that he would’ve fallen over if something didn’t stop his arm with a muffled thump. For the moment, his eyes are squeezed shut, the sensation fireworking behind his eyelids as if each passing second is twisting a knife further into him.

In the end, it doesn’t fade as much as it becomes a steady rhythm he can _mostly_ think through. Breath hissing through his teeth, he unfolds little by little, pushes his attention outward.

He’s on his back, on a cot. Hasn’t been, except since he arrived in this damn kingdom, and the overbearing elder of some dying hamlet insist he fetch up in one of their empty houses before going below. Whether or not the coot had been hoping to passive-aggressively talk him out of it, the house’d had a bed, and between then, and finding the arena, he’d slept on the ground.

The source of the splitting pain is closed behind bandages. He can prod with his fingers, find a few distinct lines across his middle the worst of it seems to be coming from. His armor is gone.

That investigation gives him a new frustration- he’s been tied down. Sturdy, soft cords from either wrist to anchoring posts. He can move his hands enough to get his wrists to eye level, lifting his head, but the tethers on both are just short enough that he can’t reach either wrist with the opposite.

What a joke. It’s been ages since anyone’s tried to get the better of him, and he’s thinking already of several ways to get at the knots when he makes the mistake of trying to sit up.

Immediately the world pitches harshly, and bile climbs in his throat. He masters the urge to be sick only cautiously, finds himself flat on his back again.

What _happened_?

He’d found the arena. Barely listened to that twittering doorman about taking a break in the resting area, but he’d had to, since apparently another challenger had already gone ahead. Sized up his competition- though, not all of it, he’d never seen that pale little thing in the trial, and one of the attendants had said the champions lived separately. Placed a mark on one of the boards, hacked through some sorry excuses, was starting to wonder if it was a waste…

…It, had started to get harder. Faster waves, the drum picking up the pace. At first it was proper entertainment. Then-

That larger cage-

Something huge, foreign, studded with protruding orange boils. Too fast, for such an ugly thing- and impossibly light on its feet, the way it had jumped-

-right on top of him.

He remembered, something had cracked.

…Where was his shield?

Sitting up suddenly had the same consequence. He was weak; disgustingly weak, but swimming vision wasn’t going to distract him until-

Familiar surface, bright silver in the room’s darkness, glinting against a setting of simple carved wood- a weapon rack of sort, a jumbled collection.

Intact. Not where he could _get_ to it, mind, and that just made him angrier, but, a certain jangling sense of panic abated. It was in one piece.

Heh.

Not that he could say the same for _himself_, apparently. He was practically weak as a maggot at the moment. Losing out to stupid _straps_.

Why was he here? Those who lost their challenges were dumped out of the bottom. They broke on the rocks, or fell into the acid. He’d seen plenty of them on the way up- some great dying oaf had nearly come down on top of him when he’d been climbing himself.

…He remembered- the monster being chased back into a cage. Everything had been hazy-

The floor giving way- light and falling-

_You are a stubborn fool._

He nurses a headache with a frustrated hand.

So, he’s alive. And useless.

Someone has to want him here badly enough to have tied him to a cot, at least. He waits until the nausea stills, the sense of things tipping and spinning. It fades from roaring in his ears, but it doesn’t properly _halt_.

When he’s sure he won’t black out from the effort, he forces himself to sit up again.

It seems like several rooms joined together- natural caves, a few with curtains put between them. There are only two proper doors; the far one hung with the decorative mask of some large, horned creature, broken and battered, its eye sockets leering. It’s a heavy, thick wooden barricade. The other is also thick and heavy, but more openwork. He squints into its depths, and something large _moves_ behind it.

He flinches, breath comes short and heart jangling near his throat- this isn’t a warrior’s trial, hardly tied down, that’s an execution, or torture, or-

Don’t. Be. _Stupid_.

No sense patching him up if they’re rigging him to die. And this isn’t an arena- it’s cluttered with furniture, the walls are closed, nowhere for anyone to watch him. If that thing were let out on the regular, it would be a mess here. But it isn’t.

He’s just injured, in some unknown part of the colosseum, with some _thing_ behind a door.

Great.

He hears footsteps.

Plans flit through his mind- plans he can’t act on, plans that’d require whoever it is wander far too close and lower their guard far too much. Instead, he drops back onto the cot, closes his eyes and tries not to squeeze them against the pain that rebukes moving quickly.

Whoever it is has a fairly light tread. Comes closer, then, pause, then a bit further away. The big thing shuffles, he can hear that, and snuffing and clicking noises.

“I missed you too.”

Alto voice. Quiet, a bit of a rumble. Tiso cracks an eye, squints; makes out a figure about his size. She’s got the silhouette of an ant, or a roach, maybe. Her back is to him, but her shell is dark-colored, bare-headed without a mask.

Seems preoccupied with the cage. If he weren’t tied down he’d teach her a lesson about lowering her guard that far, and get some answers.

_What are you thinking, you idiot? You wouldn’t get that far. You can barely sit up._

Weakness.

He hates the feeling.

She walks to the table, and he resists the urge to turn his head to follow her. He can hear her drag a chair back and sit down heavily. Silence.

He risks it.

It’s worth it; her back is to him. She’s sitting at the table. He isn’t sure what she’s doing; she leans heavily forward over the surface, her head down.

It really is a shame, if she’s ignoring him this much, that he can’t take advantage of the situation.

A burst of coughing catches him at a bad moment; it jars the painful parts of his chest and for a moment he can’t really think of anything else. He coughs until he’s wheezing; there’s the blurriness of tears at the edges of his vision. Folded up as he is, he swats them out of his eyes, rasps and catches his breath and hates every second. 

“You’re awake.”

He strikes toward the source on reflex; the straps catch his arm. She stands, unfazed, watching him.

For a moment, he can only stare.

He’s seen scars. Owns his fair share, really.

The entire right side of her face is an acid-pocked moonscape stretching from the edge of her mouth to the base of her antenna. One would be hard-pressed to even identify where an eye might once have been there.

In her remaining eye, there is a look so empty that he nearly believes that obscure, idiotic yarn he’d heard once, about Hallownest being wandered by the empty shells of warriors, still mistakable for living beings and indomitable in combat.

“How do you feel?”

The question snaps him from his distracted state, and he narrows his own eyes, spits the first thing he can think of to say. “Fuck you.”

She doesn’t even have the personal decency to blink. After a moment, she moved, came back with a bowl of something. “If you can swear at me, you can eat.”

He barely glances at the contents. If she expects an empty stomach is going to cow him, she’s underestimated the number of times he’s gone hungry. “Is this some kind of joke to you?”

“I could think of a better one,” she says.

For an embarrassing moment, he flounders for a response.

In that time, she simply sets the bowl down and wanders to somewhere else in the compound. He waits, and glares, but she doesn’t come back.

Who in the abyss’s godless pits did _she_ think she was?

(Who actually was she, for that matter.)

The bowl, he notices, is close enough he can reach it.

Spite and practicality have a furious, silent fight somewhere in the pit of his aching stomach. The battleground itself ultimately weighs in favor of the latter.

As he pulls it towards him, he notices the contents are cold, but smell faintly sweet.

He makes a final concession to spite: _If she comes back, I’m going to throw up on her on purpose_.

Dignity be damned, he’s no one’s pet.


	4. Blood

Her holiday is shorter than it was promised to be. She does not waste breath complaining when the news is given.

Her stubborn fool is awake more often than not now. At first, she thinks it is vaguely hopeful he has the energy to complain- about food, about Orisio being noisy, about her, about the lights being too bright. Ultimately, however, he is simply adept at complaining efficiently. He grouses and grumbles and protests his way into bathing alone, and she finds him slumped on the stones, needing to be pulled out of the water regardless.

His wound is healing well. The blood has stayed clean. She supposes it is not the worst time to leave him.

She sets out food as she has before, hears him eat as she takes up her weapon. When she is at the door to Orisio’s pen, he pauses, but does not call after her.

“Someone has subjected themselves to my trial,” she says, to the question he does not ask. “I am needed.”

In the labyrinthine halls of the colosseum’s belly she is royalty; each footfall carries certainty, the vast shadow of Orisio obedient at her heel. The weakened and wounded stumble out of her way as best as they can; the more nervous types prostrate or whisper to each other. The older, less excitable of them merely watch her, warily or calculating, with flinty eyes.

None dare to act on whatever they might be thinking. Even if Orisio does not keep them at bay, the experienced here know the swiftness of her lance; a few have tasted its bite. They are not many, those fools- not because she seldom uses her weapon, but because doing so, she seldom strikes to spare them.

(She recalls a gilt dagger, pressed in a crevice of her chitin, not cutting, but just touching her trembling flesh. “Mercy is the most expensive thing we deal in. You, little fool, buy and sell it carelessly. That monster of yours is testament enough- and I tell you now, you’ll know better, or my knives will find their mark.”)

The sound of the drum calls her to her place behind the gate. It is steady, now, building in intensity, pausing as each wave is passed. There is no final heavy fall of the mallet on the skin to declare that the challenger is dead- the audience is lively, rancorous, talk amongst themselves.

She mounts Orisio.

Interesting, the chatter of the audience. She cannot make it out through the walls- does not wish to- but they seem interested. Surprised.

The sudden silence.

The drum roll.

The gate lifts. Orisio waits until she touches his back to move forwards. He is obstinate- the arena’s cues never command him, only hers.

The arena’s challenger has the face of a child. It is cold, and white, and inflexible, a single fixed piece, all the way around its head. Behind that mask is only darkness. She cannot read those eyes, if they anticipate anything.

They brandish their little nail- a gleaming, silver, precious thing. Carefully kept clean; she suspects they have had it a while, even if it is of too great a quality to show scuffs and scrapes and marks of mortality.

Vanity, even when its traveling cloak is stained black by something. Such an immaculate nail, so lovingly carved, they must have flicked the blood from it every time, not let its channels be stained.

She brandishes her own blade- dull-colored, stained, and crossed with a thousand jagged scars of use.

Whatever the little thing is dreaming. Whatever it hopes, whatever it wishes for. Whoever placed that shining little blade in its hand…

These things, too, will fall from the arena.

\- -

The fight is surprisingly, not as swift as she had expected.

When she pushes the little body toward one of the trapdoors with the blunt of her lance, watches it disappear below, weeping strange black blood as it falls, it is with an aching cut across one of her thighs. By fortune, it had feinted to her blind side, and she had not been able to track it quickly enough.

The audience has laughed, and they continue laughing; the trapdoor closes and a hail of silver shells patter off her helmet and pauldrons. Orisio lifts his heavy head just as one pings off the crack in his mask- hisses in vexation.

When they are content with their generosity, they began to shuffle away. They will take their afternoon break; some to eat, some to rest. Some will return to the boxes to watch again.

A few remain, enjoying the spectacle as she gathers her winnings. With the geo flung down from the stands, she must wander the ring, plucking it from the dust and blood. They mix together; clean blue, murky gray, and the truly infected browns and oranges. Those coins, she lets Orisio lick before she touches them.

Her blood is already tainted. But it is enough within her power to delay things. Her mind stays clear. Her lance stays swift. She will remain useful to the Colosseum.

Perhaps, if she believes so long enough, the thought will become entombed in her body when it _does_ progress. Perhaps, someday, her husk will prowl this empty arena, still directing Orisio.

Perhaps other habits. She has known a husk- a former gladiator- whose colleague had thought to take his winnings as he no longer had need of them, and was surprised when he ran her through before gathering both of their shares to himself. He was dead now, she thought- truly dead, broken open by the now-champion of the Warrior Trial.

Perhaps even in death, she will linger on her knees, taking her fortune from her masters.

She stands, crosses her weapon once over her chest, in single salute to the body in the throne. She does not salute the stands, or their lingering occupants, or the slaves that have come in with brushes to clean the arena for the next event.

When she returns to her chamber, she dismisses Orisio to enter by his door. He paces a circle, still restless from the fight. She lingers at the door that will admit her, as always, checking behind her, before she opens it.

The stubborn fool’s shell is missing from the weapon rack.

The first place she thinks to look- there it is. He hasn’t completed his trip back to the bed, but fallen by its side, huddled over his prize with one arm wrapped around it.

She sighs, and rests her lance by the door before she approaches him.

“Stubborn,” she tells him, again. When he doesn’t answer, seeming spent, she crouches to pull the shell from his grasp.

He surges with sudden vigor; her injured leg, so long relatively quieted, buckles under her.

There is a blade protruding from the shield, segmented gleaming thing. It presses in the gap between helmet and cuirass. He’s shaking- standing uncertainly; the trembling of his arm ghosts the blade into her flesh.

She meets his gaze. “Are you going to kill me, stubborn fool?”

They stand in silence.

He stumbles back- usefully, in a way that does not open her throat. The shield arm dangles, the sword tip scraping on the floor. At its sound, he seems to only just know it’s still extended- he works the handle in his grasp, and it retreats, disappears into the material. “It’s mine,” he says, in a way that might be commanding if his voice wasn’t yet a thin and tired croak. “The shell is mine.”

With burst of some vigor- frustration, perhaps- he hauls himself up onto the cot and sits there with his back to her.

Stupid of him. Her lance is barely a stride away and it falls into her hand easily. She could return him the favor of that stinging cut a thousandfold in a second.

Stupid of her, to have left him, to have failed to lock the shell behind something an invalid could not pry open, to have created opportunity for this new aggravating quirk of his.

Stupid of her, to find it at all appealing, the determination that must have driven him to fight his way across the room to collect it, to probably think to hide it from her before she returned.

She knows better. Than to have him here, than to try and save anyone, in a dying world like this.

She wipes the blood from her cuirass, turns it over with curious gaze.

Not much blue at all, these days. The flickers of orange grow slowly denser.

She sighs. Lets her lance clatter in the direction of the rack with a disdainful throw. Orisio has been made uneasy by this all- he chatters restlessly and paws at the lock. She limps to him, soothes him before she sees to her own wounds.

* * *

The world swims back to focus slowly through the tang of acid. They’re floating on their back, one of the advantages of being a shell that is not, quite, empty.

Black eyes bore up the distance, through the haze of light cast by falling ash.

Not proven. Not yet. Stronger. They will return.

A glob of void leaks from the hole in their shell, hisses in the acid- they are protected, but their blood is not.

They paddle to the edge, and haul themselves out, stagger to their feet. It reminds them that they hunger- in the way that they always do. Without stomach, without teeth.

They pace, until they find their nail, and then cast their eyes upward. Something lives here, at the edge of the world. Something small, to stabilize, then something larger to sate them.

Not yet.

Stronger.

They will return.


	5. Beliefs

For a brief moment when Tiso wakes, he doesn’t know where his shield is. It had been right in his grasp- he was careful- and then his foot knocks it over with a clatter.

It lies on the floor, glinting up at him, all innocent, as if no one has tried to take it from him, or kept it out of his reach.

He scoops it up, huddles with his prize cross-legged and sees it over as best as he can without any tools. One of the fine chains that retract the blades has slipped. He hadn’t noticed it snag back when he’d pulled it on her, but that may have just been a lucky stroke. He fiddles with it, sets it back into place with his fingers but the fit is loose. It’ll slip again- one of the pieces that held it there broke. Prodding around, it seems at least like most of the structure has held.

He’ll have to find somewhere to test it. Somewhere good. He’s feeling better than he has the past few days- maybe it’s time to find out if the gladiator bug locks her door, before _she_ thinks to change her policy away from his favor.

_Are you going to kill me, stubborn fool?_

He grits his jaw against those words, sprung unbidden in his memory.

“I’m no one’s _fool_,” he says, to the quiet, dark space.

A grunt, a shift from the cell across from him. Anger and rest feeding fire into his veins, he climbs to his feet, paces over to actually stare at this thing in the cage.

It’s a great, ugly brute, alright, and not one whose like he’s seen in this kingdom. A fat body with a high, arched back, its belly rests on the ground even as it stands on its feet. But the heavy head has a broad array of eyes, the six main ones front-facing, and even the deep crack across its face doesn’t seem to have slowed it much.

A flicker of something in its eyes- it spots him- and before he can take so much of a step back it’s up against the bars, some kind of filter mouth pressed to an opening between the planks. It emits a chattering, clicking noise, rhythmically.

“He thinks you’re going to feed him now.” The gladiator’s voice is somehow, even flatter than usual. She wears no armor, bare in her dun-colored carapace. The scar is just as ugly as the first time he saw it, and he can’t make out the rest of her face, as she’s standing to his right.

“What in the void is that, anyway? It’s uglier than the oberlisks we used to have to chase off the fields at home.”

She actually turns her head to give him a look. It feels like some accomplishment, even if her face is still blank- there’s the faintest stirring of annoyance in her remaining eye. She steps closer to the cage, runs the fingers of one hand over the bridge of the beast’s shell. When it lifts its head, she moves to the soft, flabby skin under its chin with a fond air. “He is Orisio.”

“I didn’t ask what you called it.”

“Then you’ll remain disappointed.” Whatever miracle led her to actually take offense to his first comment has fled him now. She doesn’t even look up. “Even I don’t know what he is, only what he was.”

_Oh for the love of_\- it strikes him that this is the longest conversation they’ve had. More importantly, it strikes him that if she really wanted to, he doesn’t have the strength to keep his shield away from her. And that will make escaping, tinkering- _anything_\- harder.

“So what _was_ he, then?” he says, and makes some mild effort to keep the frustration out of his voice.

“A god, once.”

She says it without a trace of irony, either.

“Pfeh. Do you hear yourself?”

A pause. Her attention turns, again, over her shoulder, directing that lone eye towards him. “Ah. A fool who doesn’t believe in gods, then?”

“Let’s get this straight. I’m no one’s _fool_. And furthermore, if there’s gods anywhere, they’ve never cut _me_ any favors. So why should I care if some idiot in a castle a century ago said he was a god? He’s dead. This whole kingdom’s dead. How am I the fool, and not the huddled wretch I passed coming here who’d frozen to death hugging a statue of a dead bug?”

She watches him a moment longer than he’s entirely comfortable with.

Then, slowly, as if she is remembering to speak, “It is not caring about others that makes something a god.”

He is getting tired. It gets the better of him, as his legs are trembling; weak, disgustingly weak, crossing a room is still as much as he can handle, and he sits roughly on the cot, his mood souring even further. “Then what makes a god? The sanctimonious flagellating of their subordinates?”

“Lord Fool is a god.”

“Your ‘lord fool’ is a dead body in a chair.”

“And yet, you prostrated before him, all the same as your huddled wretch.” She turns to face him. “You crossed from foreign lands, endured the wastes, driven by a purpose. That purpose brought you here. You are here, now, in Lord Fool’s domain. Life and death serve him. We are bound, and freed, in his name. His dream, his ambition, has branded itself upon this dead kingdom’s carcass, has torn a place in your shell, as it has mine, as it has us all. His retainers- the buzzing, chattering ones that feast upon his corpse- evaluated you, found you unworthy, and discarded you. In the wilderness, with that wound, you would have certainly perished.”

As if she has said nothing much at all, she turns her head, ever so slightly, and her expression becomes something nearly like a person’s. “Gods do not care whether or not we believe in them. They are those who have the power to carve themselves into the world around them. We, the devout, are merely those who live in its cast shadow. Here, in the rot of the Wyrm, and the bones of Lord Fool. Here, his rage is immortalized. Here, we are empty shells, and we live and die by the beat of the drum. You say that you are not a fool, stubborn creature? All are fools here. Only fools come to this place.”

Whatever she sees in his face, whatever she finds in his silence, she seems to find it satisfactory. She retreats to the other side of the room, out of sight again. The quiet stretches long.

He waits some time into that silence before he spits on the floor in frustration.

She’s right about his wound, is the damning thing. As much as he’d love for the entirety of that lecture to be meaningless babble, he supposes she’s not as much of an idiot as she sounds, and that’s the frustrating bit. Left alone with his thoughts, he’s reminded again of the pain, of the frustration- of where, with repeated exposures of the springwater, his shell has mostly retaken the sutures, but has still left a broad, dark crack across the plates of his stomach, and the internal wounds are slower to mend. Exertion still leaves him shaking, nauseous, and it is a game of time, a troubling one, how much of himself he’ll be able to retake.

How much of himself, from now on, will simply remain weak, regardless of what he does.

He sets the shield down carefully, then throws himself back on the cot in frustration.

When he wakes, the room is quiet again, and he is not sure how long he’s slept. The one-eyed gladiator is gone. Her lance has vanished with her, but the brute’s still there, chewing on something in a corner of its enclosure.

He stands, shakily- grabs his shield as a second thought and stumbles as best as he can, first to the weapon rack. There’s a few good things here; all of them locked, frustratingly enough. A few other lances or spears- a weighted net, a pole with a long, carved bone hook. And here, something that surprises him- an entire rack of golden daggers, thick with dust. He runs a thumb across the surface of one, hits the edge by chance and hisses when it draws blood. Awfully sharp, for disused things.

He catches his breath, and then up again. More confidently; the edge of the room. A small nest; relatively few personal belongings. He’d expect portraits, or trophies, perhaps; instead, he finds a crude mannequin where she must leave her armor, given the dents in its cloth body; a small bed. A rough-cut table with a single drawer, unlocked- a purse of geo, relatively heavy. Another dagger, cheap stormsteel rather than the coveted pale this kingdom’s known for, but used, not like the fine, shining things in the rack. A chest by the foot of the bed- it holds nothing but a change of blankets and pillows.

Still no sign of her.

He finds his own armor resting next to the mannequin. The pauldrons are intact, but the cuirass has a large, nasty crack in it. There’s a few more pieces of metal and shell here- evidently she collects pieces, piles them in the corner of the room. He eyes them, contemplating, and then settles briefly to don the pauldrons and what’s left of the cuirass before he goes to work.

When he’s satisfied, he’s rested enough to make his way back across the room and lean on the slats of the enclosure.

The brute pauses on its meal, lifts its head. It may be a stupid animal, but, Tiso swears that he sees something like contempt in its eyes.

That makes it funnier to him, honestly.

What had she called it? Ah, yes. “Orisio.”

It comes out sharper in his accent than it does in hers; he isn’t quite sure what to make of the middle syllables. Regardless, the thing cocks its head, shifts the tendrils contemplatively, and then spits out a bone.

“Orisio,” he coos again, makes it nearly singsong, tries to capture something of her foreign lilt.

It turns to face him properly, comes over to the slats. Whatever it was eating, its tendrils are slicked with orange ichor. It makes a sound like a rattle, somewhere under the tendrils, which makes him think it probably has teeth somewhere in that mouth.

Slowly, cautiously, he reaches through the slats.

It lifts its head to push the snout under his hand. He repeats the motions he saw her make, watches translucent eyelids creep over its eyes as it settles into the gesture, stretches his neck out.

Good.

“Look at you, you’re practically a pet.”

The eyelids flick away, and it watches him clearly, but seems lulled back into it with a few more gentle motions.

His other hand finds the latch. The bolt is heavy, but slides horizontally rather than requiring lifting. He has to put his shield on his back briefly to manage it, and in the meantime, the thing watches him warily, but doesn’t startle. As the doors open, it comes forwards, sniffing him with some interest.

Its breath reeks of rotted carrion.

He’s known things to smell worse.

With his hand on its nose, he can take a few, cautious steps back, and it follows him, further into the cave. He’s not about to use the door, no- but if she isn’t an idiot, she’s got a back way. The walls surrounding the bath are nearly left natural, nearly abandoned- but one particular area’s been shored up with bracing. He moves until his back is to it, and then gropes blindly with one hand for a latch.

Finds it.

It slides aside, creaking slowly, a portal large enough that he can walk the thing right out of the door. It seems to need more coaxing and petting for this, but, he can at least keep calling it, keep persuading it.

The air in the cavern beyond is cool, and faintly ahead, he can see faint remainders of piling ash.

A path outside.

It’s broad enough he can climb onto the thing’s back, and it lets him, bows its head as if to afford familiar handholds.

“Alright. Let’s see if you _run_.”

On reflex- remembering the orebacks from back home- he presses his feet against its sides, and the creature lunges forwards, with surprising grace for its great, unwieldy body.

Not bad.

Not bad at all.


	6. Into the Training Grounds

At length, they slow by a small pool of clear water, and the creature seems totally disinterested in any cue to continue, bowing its heavy head over the surface to drink. Tiso gives up on trying to galvanize it further, and instead, slides down its side, takes a few steps to take in where he is now.

He’d expected this to be some small outlet tunnel, but, to his surprise, it’s broadened, and seems to wind far into the cliffs. It’s open to the sky above- and, thus, subject to the drifting ash- but those walls he’d have trouble climbing even if he were at full health. As he takes a few steps, his foot leaves stone, and strikes something else that creaks under his weight. He crouches, brushes the molt from it- a plank floor, old and heavy and worn.

There are more of them, he realizes, places the natural stone gave way, or has been chipped back by tools. Clusters of great stone masks, carved into the walls, form holdings for metal grating and wooden planks.

There must be a forest, somewhere, supplying them with all this lumber, even if he hasn’t seen a decent one since he walked into this blasted kingdom. Call him a savage, born and bred in the high mountains, but at least they had _trees_ back in Vale’s End. This alleged holy land had… squat roots heavy with peculiar rings, and shimmering white grasses and fungi that were useful for lighting the way, and, as far as he could tell, not much else.

Maybe that’s somewhere to go, once he gets away from here- finding the forest. Good a route as any, since he’ll need _somewhere_ to hide.

In his thoughts, he’s wandered close to an edge and looked down. The distance is faded a shade of gray; through it, he makes out more bracing and carved masks, and a murkier pool far below.

“There’s got to be some kind of way down there…” Without breaking every intact piece of shell he has, at least.

The creature, Orisio, has finished its drink and come up beside him, watching him with its head at an odd angle.

“_What_,” he spits at it, before he remembers he’s talking to an animal. With a huff, he walks away from it, paying only so much attention when it follows him.

Practically a pet indeed. For all of how fearsome it looks, it’s about as docile as the stags. He could drag this thing home and hitch it to a plow, and it’d adjust with barely any effort.

…As if he’d ever do something stupid like go home.

He paces what feels like halfway around the pit, though really it’s probably barely a quarter, before he starts getting shaky again, and has to stop to rest. Orisio comes up behind him, the big brute seeming hardly even winded by the same exertion. The tip of its snout pushes under his arm with a puff of air, and a soft bone-on-bone grinding sound.

He musters the energy to push away from it and take a few more steps before his legs simply give out, and this time when it comes up again, it wedges under his seat. He has a moment of surprise before it’s hefted him with a quick gesture, and dropped him onto its back, where he scrambles to situate himself.

“Aren’t you annoyingly insistent.” He’d rather carry himself place to place, but, well, he supposes he brought this thing with him in the first place because he can’t do that very well now. Impressive, he supposes, that it knows how to pick him up like that.

It also seems to have a sense of where he wanted to go; it paws cautiously at the edge of the canyon, tilts its head one way, then another, and then sets off around the exterior, pacing as he had.

It won’t listen to him, however he tries to tap at its shell now- so he can really do little but settle back for the ride, pulling his shield off his back to lie down, staring at the sky and drifting ash above them.

“I wondered, coming here, why anyone would build an arena this far out.” Talking comes natural, fills the silence, and with no witnesses but the stupid beast, he can at least get his thoughts in order. “Took it as a challenge, I guess; it makes sense, check the cowards at the door, only bring the types who’re worth it. Something really deadly and vicious won’t want to waste time on lesser people.”

What had happened? When had paradise become so unpleasant? The dead body in the throne, he thought, well, it had more been aggravating to hear the one-eyed gladiator claim that was a _god_ than to see it. He’d walked past the bodies- on the way up, or dangling from chains. Some of them hadn’t even been dead, but yet had the strength to turn their heads, or grasp at his legs.

“Feh. Maybe it’s still paradise to you. I’m sure you don’t care as long as you’re fed, and there must be plenty to eat in a place like this. Do they pick who has the honor of being your food? You must be important, if I never ran into anything your size.”

Three tiers, he remembered the chattering doorman saying- the first tier, warrior, had ten paths. The second had five, the third, just one. Depending on performance, some were advanced quickly through the trials; others had to fight in the first trial for years, path by path, before they were dreamed worthy of placing a mark on the higher boards.

He’d found the whole thing disagreeable- threatened the doorman who’d ultimately caved and offered him his chance at the highest trial.

…This thing under him, now, Orisio- is about the size of the monster that’d cracked his shell. He wonders if that’s its lot in life; springing from a cage hauled into the arena, ambushing someone who thought they’d catch their breath for a moment.

Seems a stupid liability, to leave something so tamable on its own. Maybe it didn’t.

He let his thoughts wander, as the gray sky passes over him. “You know,” he speaks up again, and Orisio slows, almost like it’s listening, “it makes sense she’s in the habit of talking to you. I thought it was stupid, but you’re preferable company to some of the idiots I’ve had the misfortune of sharing a road with. Remind me of a little pale thing I ran into a few times on the road. Wasn’t much for conversation, but it was a decent listener.”

He’d figured after the first time that the little bug couldn’t answer him. But it had been a good repository, for whatever newest frustration had blocked his path. Part of him almost wants to regret the way he’d spoken to it before the trial, but, well- it wasn’t like it was a lie. He’d come there to kill. Even now, if something comes after him, he’ll be able to slit their throat well enough, despite the broken mechanism in his shield.

“…Either way, if it wasn’t scared off, they’d be dead now. No getting past that thing in the third trial, if they even made it that far.”

The sky disappears under a broad strut. A wrought metal gate; Orisio lifts its head. The flabby flesh under its snout inflates, and begins to fill with a writhing orange ichor the likes of which Tiso recognizes from the cliff-dwelling acid spitters. The pouches continue to swell, and Tiso starts to reconsider if he should be on this thing’s back- a wave of orange washes through its eyes and then a moment later- a shudder makes its way from back to front through the creature’s entrails and it heaves a great glob of sickly-smelling slime directly onto the gate in front of them. It reeks profoundly; Tiso presses a forearm over his mouth, trying to breathe as little of it as possible.

For all the foulness of it, though, it clearly works; before his eyes he can watch the metal corrode and eat away at itself until, by simply raking with a probing forelimb, Orisio splinters enough of an opening for the both of them to pass through, provided Tiso lays flat, which he does.

He sits up once they’re through, glancing back at the opening. “…Huh! Good thing I didn’t leave _you_ behind. That’d ruin the surface on my shell, all right.”

It would probably do much more than that, but this beast won’t force him to humble himself, so he’s not about to. Instead, they pass into a more secluded area, away from the sky.

This place actually looks like a training ground; albeit, one that has not seen anything approaching regular use in years. Drifted ash covers most of the wood-and-stone floors, lingers on dolls hewn in the rough likeness of bugs. Tiso slides down from Orisio’s back, walking up to one and swatting the flakes of molt from it until he can look at the patterns of wear. Slashing impacts to the torso- fine-bladed thrusts on the head and body.

Might be trouble, if she comes here a lot- or even if she doesn’t, and just knows the way. On the other- he’s reluctant to let go of his earlier assessment. What’s more, the area isn’t even cleared- an openwork cage has been abandoned here, lying on its side, door hanging open at a strange angle like a bad tooth.

He shifts his grip on the shield, starts with the retractable sword. It comes out without difficulty, and he can make a few slashes without too much trouble; while he pays for it with soreness, it’s a good feeling, to get the blood moving again. He’s languished too long.

Orisio rumbles ponderously.

“Heh. Guess you must not get out much either, huh? Well, you can go run around, or something. I’ll be here a bit.”

The big thing actually moves back, shuffling off through the drifts and timbers. Tiso can only raise an eyebrow at that- he didn’t really expect the one-eyed gladiator would be the type to train ‘go run around or something’ as a command.

Well, whatever. He closed the tunnel behind him, and a big brute like that can’t be hard to track down if he needs him again.

He focuses himself back on the movements, the haste and fluidity of things. A thrust, a slash. The dolls, despite their disrepair, were well-made; he actually had to plant his foot and wrench the sword free.

Some part of the area settles, with a crumble of stone. He pauses, looks in that direction- the thing that created the disturbance is sitting so still that he doesn’t identify it until a second pass.

Unfortunately, it seems to feel his eyes on it- and immediately explodes in a flurry of movement and howling, bounding towards him. He slashes with the blade- it weaves under it and tackles him. Small, but hard claws scrabble for his neck, and he retracts the blade, swinging the shield to try and break its grip and get between the pressing attacker and his body. The blade clunks and folds oddly, but he’s able to get the shell into position- the attacker claws wildly at his arms, screaming incoherently all the while.

“Keda! Keda! Keda! Where’s Keda?”

The shield’s mechanisms aren’t responding; it grips the edge and starts trying to pry it off his arm. He can feel his energy flagging- when his grip doesn’t release it seizes the edge of the shield and begins slamming it against his chest, bringing most of its weight down to bear on him. A faceless mask leers at him, still screeching and howling.

“Never let you! Never let you! Never!”

Something clinks under the thing’s rags. It’s climbed on top of him, on top of the shield, holds something-

_It has a dagger_.

Fear floods when anger fades. He folds himself lower, draws the shield up above his head and feels the strike glance off his horn with surprising force. The screeching intensifies, even scattered words disappearing in favor of raw animal sounds- it’s shaking the shield again, jarring his shield like it might be jumping on it- he needs to get out from underneath-

-underneath-

_-the shadow of the beast over him, orange eyes leering. Shield up, his legs buckling under him. A breaking sound- a sound he had only later realized was the shell of his stomach._

_ He’d been left, lying on his back. Cackling- _howling_\- from the stands above him, peals of laughter, wretched and sickening- bugs in chains, with stooped shoulders, coming out to clear the arena. One had come over to him, looked at him with empty eyes._

_ A sharp prod, with a long-handled broom, a shove that had sent him to one side. Mechanisms moving under him-_

_ -they couldn’t do this-_

_ -he was still alive-_

_ -no glory, in something like this-_

_ The floor gave way, and he plunged through a shaft in the floor, the sudden brightness of the world outside._

_ Falling- the way that failed bodies fell._

A final jolt to the shield; his head strikes stone, and he sleeps.


	7. The Way Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> body horror / gore warning for this chapter. If you're uncomfortable with vermin and unsanitary environments, proceed with caution.

When he stirs, he’s being jostled faintly by repetitive movement.

“I’m still rather cross with you.”

Even half-awake, he can recognize the one-eyed gladiator’s voice. The faint groan nearby, something creaking its remorse, is harder to place at first.

“Either of them could have hurt the other.” He feels her shift his weight, and realizes in that moment, he’s draped over her back- he can feel her gorget under his arms.

“…Why?”

She pauses, in speech if not in stride.

“…Why are you keeping me alive?”

Silence greets his words. He can see the timbers passing over him; it seems they’re in a different section of the same area.

Then,

“If you’re waiting for a reason to live from me, you’ve chosen poorly, stubborn fool. I only live because I fear death. If not, I’d have disappeared into the ash of this place a long time ago.”

A croon arose from the shape rustling along behind them. He doesn’t have the energy to turn his head, but he thinks he knows what it is now.

“I suppose I thought you weren’t the same as me, in that regard.” Her empty voice carries well in the lonely space. “You always seem to want to live, whether or not you have the means to do so.”

They travel in silence. His shield, he realizes, is hanging on his back, even if it was on his arm when he lost consciousness.

He feels _horrible_. But he’s got a spark left, and it grasps the one thing he can hold.

“…Tiso.”

He feels her attention shift, more than hears a response.

“My name. Use it. I’m not a fool anything. And I don’t care what you say about your damn god.”

She makes a noise of small amusement, that, for the life of him, he’s not sure is actually contemptuous.

“Tiso. I’ll commit it to memory.”

Having been awaiting some sort of returned barb, he’s left blinking. In the meantime, she slides down a ledge fairly easily, her feet kicking up small pebbles and ash. Orisio visibly struggles down the same ledge, trotting to keep up with her. It makes mournful noises as it does, but she does not look back.

“He’s sulking,” she says, idly, as if picking up the angle Tiso is looking at. (She can probably feel him turn his head, he realizes) “He knows I’m angry, so he’s making a show of being pitiful. He shouldn’t have taken you here.”

She’s angry at the beast, but not him?

What a weird perspective she has. He’d have assumed she would’ve been outraged at him over her precious pet, considering how fond of it she seems. “Where’s here? Your training ground?”

Silence.

He is left with the feeling that he has asked a harsher question than he is allowed.

Instead, he backs off, changes subject. “Surprised you didn’t just put me up on the thing’s back again. That’s most of how I got here.”

A small reward, a huff of amusement. “Worried after me? You’re not that much heavier than my lance.”

“_What_?”

She halts. “Quiet.”

Peering over her shoulder, he can see they’ve moved to less abandoned places. The ash here is crushed underfoot, discolored to a sludge to leave a nearly open path. Something jingles as it moves, a hunched shape. Larger than either of them, prodding at the ground with a broom.

Tiso’s shell crawls slightly. Even in the low light of flickering torches, the shape of this figure and the tool they wield are familiar to him. As the gladiator approaches, slowly, it is even the same empty stare it turns down at the two of them.

The larger bug makes a slightly clumsy bow. It is wearing a set of four thick, heavy chains, chains Tiso wouldn’t have put on an oreback, but it lifts them effortlessly as it stands. “God-Tamer. You bring an other. Is it meat, or servant?”

“He is mine,” she says, sharply in the silence, and Tiso takes pause at her tone. “His fate is mine to decide. I needn’t speak it to you.”

Tiso cannot read that expression, but something in the bug’s eyes seems contemplative. “Speaker decides all fates, God-Tamer. Surely you know this.”

A tinny scoff echoed from the gladiator’s helmet. “You’re truly not insinuating the Speaker sully her shell and waste _my_ time, merely to tell you to stand aside? You will move, Path-Sweeper, or I will be cross, having to set down my burden merely to run you through. If you yearn for a death above your station, place a mark with the others.”

“…Mrr,” the larger bug grunts to itself, plodding unevenly to the side.

They are most of the way past it, before it speaks again. “…Speaker has not evaluated this one, then, God-Tamer.”

“Neither you nor my beast are kept for conversation. I am carrying a burden. The beast is not, if you care to prattle further, Path-Sweeper.”

She proceeds onward in certain strides. Her grip on his legs does not relax. Were they not already beaten senseless by the mountains he’d climbed to get here, he expects it would have begun to hurt after a while.

These halls are everything the land outside is not. They are warm, and filled with chattering and sounds. Some doors are open, and lead to other hallways or chambers; a sweltering blast of heat interrupts them as they pass a kitchen. Others are cells, filled with bug and beast alike.

They are strewn with bodies, creating a center thoroughfare that is just barely large enough for Orisio to move through. Some seem to be sleeping, or watching what goes on; they pull back as the party passes through. Others are languishing in injury; a few may well be dead. The gladiator carrying him steps over a body, sprawled on its back; one of the shield-bearers he saw in his own trial. Orange ichor weeps openly from the holes in its helmet; its chest rises and falls as if yet alive, but it does not seem to notice that vermin are gnawing on an open wound in its shoulder; they scatter, hissing, as her foot plants close to their meal, but regroup in her wake without fear.

Even if they weren’t surrounded by potentially hostile ears, Tiso isn’t feeling very much like opening his mouth. Both because of a nausea that has very little to do with the wound in his stomach, and that he would like to breathe in as little of the way this place smells as possible.

There’s a hiss, a screech, and a _thunk_\- a body tumbles forward, evidently having been thrown back. Orisio chatters, picking up his pace and moving closer behind the gladiator. For her part, she does not flinch or slow her pace at all.

They progress upward. Slowly, the paths become cleaner. While there are still wounded here, they are off the floor, and most of their wounds are tied off. Some gladiators are without their helmets, leaving them resting beside or under their arm; it reveals their expressions- some sour, some entertained, some simply curious- as their eyes follow the party. He tries to make sense of the route they’ve traversed this far, but the Colosseum is a maze. He can only guess at its size. Larger than he’d expected, certainly. There are no cells at this level, but, they are also sparsely populated. The numbers dwindle further as they go, until they pass entire hallways without seeing a soul.

He could probably break the silence now, but he does not want to, he finds.

When they approach a familiar door, he feels the gladiator relax slightly under him. She hums, and clicks her fingers; Orisio comes expectantly to her side, lets her pluck her lance from his back before he proceeds to a different entrance and inside.

She follows, herself, pausing to close the door behind her and secure a rather heavy latch across it. She leans the lance against the wall, and then sets him on the cot.

For a moment, they face each other in silence, her expression unreadable behind the shield of her helmet.

“Will you take that thing off, if you’re going to talk to me?” It seems the easiest thing to target at the moment.

A silence. Then, with a sigh that seems only somewhat resigned, she tips the visor up. “Most don’t want to see a face like mine.”

“If the alternative is no face at all, I prefer it.” He leans back against the wall; his shield twitches and springs under him, the blade extending. He scrabbles at it for a moment, brings it in front of him where he can work the mechanisms and retract the blade in frustration. Damn it. So it doesn’t get _stuck_, it’s just on a hair-trigger now. That, or it’s gotten worse.

She’s turned her head away from him when he looks up, and her good eye is lowered in some sort of sullen look. “…Tiso.”

“What?”

“Regarding that place beyond these rooms, and anything you may have seen there…”

“Oh, sorry, is your feral maniac _private_?”

He can tell he’s said the wrong thing simply by the way the air shifts, but, in the off-chance he hadn’t, that her lance has been removed from the wall and is now resting point first just above the collar of his armor is a subtle sign.

He recalls, not all that long ago, their positions were switched. At the moment, his request to see her face seems absurd; the way her expression has closed, there might as well still be the helmet in the way.

He had balked, then- for reasons, he supposes; no honor in gutting some gladiator you caught off-guard, in his state killing the one person who’d tended to him, much as he hated to need her help, was a bad idea- but he has no idea, really, who she is. That bug had called her ‘God-Tamer’, much as she had called them ‘Path-Sweeper’, a utilitarian title that was not a name, however much power it suggested.

He knows why he hesitated.

The spear at his throat doesn’t move. Not to drive deeper, or to withdraw. 

Then, her grip shifts on the weapon’s haft, and she withdraws it, slings it over her shoulder, pulling her visor back down over her features with a single brisk gesture. “Breathe a word of it to anyone else within this structure, and I’ll complete the strike, stubborn fool.”

She stalks out of sight, keeping her weapon with her.

She doesn’t come back.

From the enclosure, Orisio is watching him sidelong. Just like before, there is a certain disdain in the beast’s eyes.

Unlike before, Tiso is no longer sure if this is mere imagining.

He puts his back to those eyes, and tries to sleep.


	8. Respite

At some point, he must have succeeded in dozing off, because when he wakes, the gladiator- the God-Tamer- is sharpening her weapon, seated cross-legged by the rack with her back to him.

He thinks he is quiet, sitting up, but with barely a tilt of her head, “how are you feeling?”

“Miserable as ever.” He rolls his shoulder with some irritation, mostly at getting caught so easily. “What, have you been hovering over me while I slept, making sure I didn’t sneak off again?”

“You make interesting assumptions about how much my schedule revolves around you, Tiso.” It’s dryly chiding, but reassuring after a fashion. Whatever passed between them earlier seems to have settled.

There’s still a bloodless notch in the chitin of his neck. She’d barely pulled the strike; an inch further and it would have slit his throat. He resists the urge to rub the mark, leaning to get a better look at her whetstone technique instead. She’s not bad, and the quality of the stone is decent, but the weapon itself… “There’s only so much you’re going to be able to do, slaving over that thing. You have better ones.”

She makes another pass with the stone, pauses to check her handiwork. “Call it sentimental attachment.”

A scoff. “You, sentimental?” Having spent several days at the hands of her tender loving care, he begs to differ.

“I have my moments.” She sets the stone aside, and he can hear a bit of a smile in her words, even if he doubts there is any trace of it on her features. “What of yourself? You’re certainly quite attached to that shell.”

He scoffs, running a hand over the surface, more mindful of the sensitive grip. “Incomparable. This took years to put together.” He made a light pass at the air with it. “Heh, not that I won’t have to do better, since it’s broken.”

She doesn’t seem as reverent as he would’ve liked, but after a second thought, she strikes as more distracted than disrespectful. “…You made it yourself?”

“Of course I did. I wouldn’t put faith in something any idiot gave me.” Setting it on his lap, he runs a familiar, methodical system of checks; he doesn’t have the tools to fix it but he can at least make some sort of start. “A real warrior ought to make all their own weapons, shouldn’t they?”

A ruminative pause. Another scrape of the whetstone. “I would not be a warrior by that metric.” She hefts her lance with familiar ease, beholding it in a better light. This is bone- little carved, largely grown in shape. It must have come from a large creature, he supposes, as it’s all one piece, and looks like it might have once been a jawbone.

His path had crossed briefly with some cowardly sort carrying a club made of a broken tooth- he knows this land yields such prodigious corpses, larger than any in Vale’s End. It is still a bit sobering. Subdued, he grunts. “I’m just saying. You won’t find anything better than you can make with your own hands, and a bit of- effort-” the last word comes gritted, as he tries to pry a bit more at a stubborn mechanism, and is then summarily clipped when it backfires, smacking him in the stomach with what’s fortunately one of the blunt panels.

Regardless, it’s enough to bring tears to his eyes, and he hisses, holding the spot and thinking of little except _stupid_\- find a better worktable, while it’s so wretchedly spring-loaded- until he hears a sound.

As if surprised to hear it herself, her short, bewildered guffaw becomes more of a steady laugh, the back of one hand resting against the squat beak of her helmet.

It is one of the things least like a corpse she’s done this entire time, and he finds himself pulling a face but doing little more as she settles, shakes her head. “Of course, it usually _works_ better.” He buries the unfamiliar rush of emotion, and the tangled sentiments now squabbling over it, in further tinkering. “Wouldn’t be surprised if one of the smaller gears ended up in my stomach. It’d _explain_ why the thing isn’t-” holding the shield at a better angle, he wrenched the stuck panel open, and exclaims in small dismay at the interior. “…No, I’ll have to replace all of this. Fantastic. Surprised that any of the blades even manage to retract at all.” The assembly was torn along one of the seams in the outer shell, looking like it had been crushed when the ostensible protective plate had folded inwards.

The Colosseum had to have a forge, somewhere, didn’t it? There was no way its appetite for metal could be sated without the tools close at hand. His mind drifted, looking over what he had seen of the belly of the structure.

…The bodies…

_If you’re waiting for a reason to live from me, you’ve chosen poorly._

And another voice, one he’d long thought silenced:

_You never pay attention to the right thing, fool boy. It’ll be the death of you one of these days_.

The God-Tamer climbs to her feet, and goes to put her lance back on the rack, apparently pleased with its sharpness.

“Why does the Colosseum have cells? I thought people killed for the privilege.”

“Oh, they do,” she says, with lofty contempt that digs its teeth into his pride. “You’ve heard all the stories of this place.”

“That it’s a paradise set aside for the very strongest, to challenge themselves against the ultimate opposition. I wouldn’t have come here otherwise. The creatures in the lands I’d come through were all pathetic, and I’d gotten tired of sharpening my weapon on them.”

“…That’s all?”

“Of course it is. Why would _you_ have come here?” He resents that she sounds faintly shocked.

Silence. He expects, at first, that she is not going to answer him.

Then, with a slow turn of her head, “…I suppose, hardly for a better reason.” Before he can ask anything more, she continues. “There are challengers, of course, and it is important not to dissuade them. To this end, the Colosseum presents a charitable front. But it cannot truly afford to be so discerning. While its challengers are those fortuitous enough to pay its fees, it harvests from the desperate or simply those who will not be missed. They are kept below, unless they earn higher privilege by their performance.”

Tiers of challenges. _Your performance_, the gate guard had said.

…Well, it makes sense, he supposes. He despises the implications of it, regardless, the idea of perishing in squalor from infection or parasite in the dark. With new eyes, he takes in the airy elegance of this place, the size of the chambers, as little of it is occupied. “Why am I here?”

“I told you-”

“I’m not asking _existentially_.” His folded arms rest across the tender chitin on his stomach. “I failed your challenge. I didn’t ‘earn the right’ by my performance. You didn’t leave me to rot. There have to be terms on that.”

She pauses, scrutinizing him, and then takes a position leaning against the wall, crossing her own arms in false-casual imitation of his. “Besides what I have already impressed upon you,” (he resists, again, the urge to touch his neck) “not yet. But you needn’t despair for a lack of certainty. There will be consequences for having paraded you past most of the Colosseum.”

“Right. That ‘Speaker’ of yours?”

“She’s not of mine.” Her tone is dry, regardless. “And her attention is a troubling thing to acquire.”

“Troubling even for you?” With a title like God-Tamer, and the ability to offer death to any who’d question her…

The silence that falls is not quite enough to make him regret the question, but it answers it without further input.

“…So the Speaker is a problem.”

“She poses one,” she concedes delicately, “if she chooses. And she will choose. It is not in her habit to leave matters unattended.”

“Right. What are the odds of killing her when she comes to make this judgment?”

“If you can think of a way to achieve that, I would welcome it. Of course, keep in mind if you attempt and fail, if she does not feel charitable, she could instruct me to kill you.”

“Well, isn’t this a charming little world.” His brows draw together. “So much for a dignified challenge.”

She regards him a moment, brows lofted.

“What?”

“You have some _very_ strange ideas about warriors, Tiso. Are all where you come from like this?”

“If they were, they wouldn’t have had the gall to beg me to stay and keep the bandits off their back. There’s a reason I didn’t stick around to prove myself to them.” He drums his fingers on one of the exterior panels of the shell. “Don’t give me that look, I was never their knight in the first place. They just wanted me to replace the one they had, once he up and died.”

“And you didn’t.”

“Of course not. I saw how he went. It was a pitiful end in a miserable little pond somewhere. None of them even dug him a grave, either.”

She is still watching him, illegibly, visor down. Refusing to be cowed, he stares back, stubbornly.

Silence falls.

Finally, she looks away. “It’s good to see you haven’t fared too badly.”

“Besides hitting myself in the stomach with a broken shield? No, I’m doing fantastic.” It’s voiced in scorn, but, reluctantly, he concedes, it actually has a point. He isn’t quite so shaky now.

She isn’t wearing as much of her armor, he realizes; the tasset and gorget removed, helmet retained seemingly out of habit. Like this, he can see that she has more scars, than the one she hides on her face- as much as her weapon is battered and crossed with cuts, so are her arms. Fewer on her legs.

Scars were proof of survival. They were proof something had tested you and failed.

…At least, that was what he’d told himself, before he had a notch in the front of his neck, and a crack across his stomach.

Now…?

A ringing sound catches his attention- three sharp jangles, interspersed with very precise silences.

The God-Tamer, he notices, has gone very still.

Before he asks, she walks to the door, briskly and silently, and draws it open.

The first thing that strikes him is the unmistakable smell of rot.


End file.
